The End is a Time and a Place
by Sandrine Shaw
Summary: Elena makes a fateful choice. Klaus makes a promise. Post 3x22.


**The End is a Time and a Place**  
by Sandrine Shaw

When he hears footsteps crunching softly on the stony ground, he thinks for a moment that the witch has returned. Doesn't know whether he'll have to gather up his strength for a real fight or just try not to roll his eyes in the face of her righteous contempt, but he's prepared for either.

What he's not prepared for is coming face to face with the doppelganger. It takes him a split second longer than he likes to get his Tyler face on. The surprise in his voice is something he doesn't have to feign. "Elena! What are you doing here?"

"Tyler?" The surprise mirrors on her face. "What- I thought- They said you were dead."

Right, that. He cocks his head and looks at her, trying futilely to catch her eye. "It's... a long story. I wanted to get Caroline to safety, so I faked it. She would never have left without me if she thought I was alive." The best lies, as they say, are based on the truth. His mind is racing to come up for an excuse as to why he didn't leave with Caroline, but Elena doesn't ask. All she does is nod dully, distractedly, as if her mind is a million miles away.

It's only then that he notices the blood bag she's clutching in her hands. He concentrates on her heartbeat. It's there, but too slow - inhumanly slow, and slowing yet by the second. Her body is dying, and yet not.

"You're in transition." It's not something he ever thought he'd get to witness. He knows she and her friends must have gone a long way to make sure that this didn't happen a few months back, after the ritual. And yet here she is, about to strip off humanity like an old, worn skin and enter immortality. He can't keep the fascination out of his voice. "Pray tell, how did this happen?"

She shrugs again and sits down on the ground in slugging movements.

"It's a long story." She smiles humorlessly as she echoes his words back to him. "Actually, it's not. Rebekah ran our car off the bridge. I don't know if she just wanted revenge or if she thought it was the only way to stop Alaric. I guess it doesn't matter either way. I had vampire blood in my system from when Meredith had treated me in the hospital. I died. I woke up again. End of story." Another shrug.

"Why come here, then? Shouldn't you be at home with Stefan and Damon coddling you?"

Elena looks at the blood bag in her hands, turns it several times as if she expects it to look different and is disappointed when it remains cool and crimson and wobbly. "I needed some time away from them."

"To think about whether or not you want to transition."

"I didn't want anyone to interfere. They all want me to go through with it, and if I decide not to... I don't know if they would accept my decision." When she looks up at him there's something almost challenging in her gaze.

Klaus slides down on the ground next to her. Warmth is seeping into his side where they're touching, from shoulder to knee. "Of course they wouldn't. Can you blame them, love?"

She stills against him for a moment, then shakes her head as if to clear her mind or maybe to deny what he said. When she turns her gaze on him, her eyes steadily stare into his. "This is the most important decision I will ever make. It needs to be mine, and mine alone. I love them, but I can't let them decide this over my head. I would never forgive them."

Privately, he thinks she's exaggerating. He's yet to see anything Elena Gilbert is unable to forgive, especially where the Salvatore brothers are concerned. But perhaps this is her hard limit.

"So, what are you going to do?"

Beside him, Elena takes a deep breath, eyes fixed on the blood bag. "I don't know."

Maybe Tyler would let her get away with the lie. Klaus can't - or perhaps he merely won't. "I think you do. If you ask me, you made your choice the moment you took off into the woods on your own. You didn't come here to think. You came here to die, and you know it."

Elena turns and smiles at him. It's a sad smile, full of mourning for a life she never had, but it still makes his breath catch, and for the first time he understands why Stefan would fight his very nature to be with this girl, and why Damon would gladly lay down his life to save hers.

"Will you let me?" she asks. "If I decide that this is it, that I'm not going to drink this blood and just let nature run its course, are you going to stop me?"

He feels awkward - an unpleasant and unfamiliar sensation he blames on the body he currently inhabits: Elena, he assumes, expects her friend Tyler to display a certain reaction, and he never paid close enough attention to their interactions to fake it properly. It stands to reason that Tyler would be sympathetic towards Elena, that much at least is obvious from the way he helped her the other day when Klaus had her strapped to the chair intending to bleed her dry, but beyond that it's a stab in the dark.

"It's your choice, Elena," he tells her, fumbling for something Tyler may have said in his stead. He's rather proud how much like Tyler he sounds. He may be getting the hang of this yet.

Elena's hand is suddenly on his arm, clammy and pale but firm, and he almost pulls away. Her grip tightens. Her eyes seek his. Her breathing is shallow and uneven, and when she speaks it sounds like it takes an effort to get the words out. "Promise me, Klaus. I'm useless to you now. Please don't do this out of spite, just because you can."

Well. So much for his Tyler act, then.

He smirks. "You figured it out then. I have to say, I didn't think you would, all caught up in the process of dying as you are. Congratulations."

When he reaches out to brush a damp strand of hair out of her face, she offers him a weak smile. "You're a terrible impersonator. Your Tyler is even worse than your Alaric was. _Promise me!_"

It's evident that she can barely keep her eyes open. The blood bag slips from her fingers and drops on the ground. They both look down for a second before her gaze seeks his once more.

"Rest easy, sweetheart. I can assure you that you're nothing to me like this. I couldn't care less if you live or die."

Even with her strength obviously leaving her, her smile is a fraction warmer now. "You have... no idea... how refreshing it is to hear that."

Oddly enough, he gets it. After everyone who has risked her life to save her, who died for her, everyone with a vested interest in her life or in her death, it must be nice to have someone declare that he doesn't care either way.

"Aren't you glad that it's me and not Tyler, now?"

Briefly, Elena's fingers tighten on his arm. Then her eyes flutter shut and her breath stills.

When he tries to untangle himself, her head sinks to the side and her hand slips away from his arm. It's oddly silent in the cave now without her erratic breaths and her quiet heartbeat echoing in his ears.

Klaus looks at her, silent and pale next to him, and he suddenly flashes back to the ritual: her defiance when she refused to take his hand.

Her pleas when he dragged her through the hallways of her school. _'You don't have to hurt anybody.'_Imploring eyes swimming with tears.

The dark promise in those same brown eyes, five hundred years ago, when he first met Katerina, before it all turned sour.

Tatia's carefree laughter. Her soft kisses.

Her broken, lifeless body on the ground of a cave just like this one, after Mikael and Esther had forced her blood down his throat.

He reaches for the blood bag and rips the plastic open with a flick of his nail, putting it against Elena's lifeless lips and pushing until the blood starts spilling.

For a long, awful moment, nothing happens. A river of red runs down her chin, staining her jeans and pooling on the ground next to her. Seconds tick by. And then, at last, she starts sucking.

She comes awake with a gasp, her dark-veined gaze full of hurt and betrayal even as her hands come up to clutch the blood bag and she continues sucking it dry. It's only when the bag is empty that she tears herself away from it and throws it across the cave.

It makes a soft dull sound as it bounces off the stone.

"You promised," she says, voice trembling with righteous accusation. "You said you would let me die."

He shrugs and fakes a casual smile that comes easier on Tyler's face than it would have come on his own.

"I lied."

End.


End file.
